Naming and Organizing Reports
A recurring discussion on the siteadmins mailing list is how to organize reports, both for end users and report writers.
Here are some suggestions that have been posted.
Note: Do not use backslashes ("\") in report names.
The Favorites Preference is a good choice for end users who frequently run a subset of reports. This per-user preference adds a default filter to the report lists so the person viewing only sees reports they have tagged as a Favorite (using the heart icon).
Users can float their mouse cursor over their name in the upper right corner of any page, then go to the My Preferences page.
Descriptive names make the search box on report lists more useful. Entering 'time' in the search box should return all reports related to timekeeping, entering 'vawa' should return all VAWA reports, etc.
Naming schemes that are popular are prefixing:
- by office (SB for South Bronx, CC for Center City),
- by program (FP for Foreclosure Project, DV for Domestic Violence unit),
- by grant or project (VAWA -, LITC - , GAR -, IOLTA -),
- by purpose (QA for quality assurance, DI for data integrity),
- or a combination of these.
The scheme chosen is less important than following it consistently. Consistency will also improve results with the search box.
Adding Category, Grouping, and Office Location information to reports (in the Attributes section) so people can use those filters on the Reports lists.
If your Reports section front isn't already dynamic, make it so, then make Tabs that make sense to your folks:
Or you can go crazy be super duper organized like Vivian:
